Object of the game is to be the first civilization to move your token to the 
right hand side of the "AST", a track showing advances thru the Stone Age, 
Bronze Age and Iron Age. You move on the AST based on how many "TOOLS" (such 
as Astronomy, Law, Pottery) you have and how many "CITIES" you have.

At the start of the game you put down tokens to indicate your population, 
which increases each turn, in territories on the map. There is a limit as how 
many pop tokens can be in each area indicated on the area, and if you have 
excess at the end of a turn you lose them. In the first part of the game you 
want to move your tokens (moving to adjacent areas) so as to carve out a 
largish rural empire. All conflict is resolved purely by removing tokens in 
equal numbers from each side, with _no_ random elements. Remember the object 
is _NOT_ to conquer the entire map (token limit for each player prevents that 
in any case), but only to give yourself some room to advance and... build 
CITIES.

If you put 6 tokens in a area which is marked as a good city site (red or 
yellow squares on the map), instead of losing the extra token at the end of 
the turn, _all_ the tokens are replaced by a *city*, _and_ at the end of the 
turn (for each city) you get a TRADING CARD which is symbolic of some common 
trade commodity from the period such as hides, wine, or gems. The cards all 
have values from 1 to 9, and are drawn from stacks sorted by value, so that 
you will tend to get only low cards if you have only a few cities and higher 
value cards if you have more. You accumulate cards and then trade them in on 
TOOLS (see above) each round if you desire. You can also trade the cards with 
other players, with the condition that you must offer sets of 3 cards, telling 
honestly what 2 of them are, and bluffing, if you wish, about the 3rd. Trading 
of cards to make _sets_ is important, as sets have numeric value over and 
above the the numbers on each card.